Well after vaccines became widely available in the United States, the Delta variant began tearing through the country. realaxelfoley and dwallacewells discuss why America is such an outlier among rich countries
The kind of scene the U.S. didn’t want to face again. Photo: Apu Gomes/AFP via Getty Images Well after vaccines became widely available in the United States, the Delta variant began tearing through the country, adding tens of thousands of deaths to the already grievous toll and possibly stalling the country’s economic recovery.
For most of 2020, many Americans — particularly liberal Americans — viewed the country’s pandemic as a horrific outlier. Statistically, though we certainly should have and could have done better, the country was not really an exceptional case among its peer nations, at least judged in terms of per capita death rate. But in this wave the country has indeed been an outlier, with no similarly vaccinated country experiencing nearly the amount of death we have.
If I had to gather hypotheses now, looking back, I’d list a few possibilities, though I certainly wouldn’t feel comfortable endorsing any of them in full: the possibility that, indeed, the Delta variant is more severe in addition to being more transmissible; the nature of regionalization, where you have certain relatively large pockets of quite vulnerable people even in a county with relatively high vaccination rates, such that national vaxx figures and even state-level vaxx figures don’t...
David: The short answer is: Yes. The age skew of the disease is extremely dramatic, which means that the elderly and especially the very elderly are much, much, much more vulnerable than even middle-aged people with bundles of comorbidities. But while 83 percent and 93 percent are frustratingly low numbers, they still suggest that, overall, vaccines would have reduced the mortality risk of America’s elderly by four-fifths.
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U.S. Covid Death Toll Passes 700,000 As Delta Surges In Some StatesI am a London-based reporter for Forbes covering breaking news. Previously, I have worked as a reporter for a specialist legal publication covering big data and as a freelance journalist and policy analyst covering science, tech and health. I have a master’s degree in Biological Natural Sciences and a master’s degree in the History and Philosophy of Science from the University of Cambridge. Follow me on Twitter theroberthart or email me at rhartforbes.com
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